The East Cape Drive

East Cape Drive continued...
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Onward bound, heading for Gisborne or as close as we can get- it's such a long way.  The scenery was truly awesome, we originally started with about 400 photos just of the views from the car, too many for the blog so we've had to cut a few to say the least.  We drove for hours enjoying all to see, as dusk was drawing in we started the usual worry of where are we going to settle for the night added this time by a distinct lack of fuel and not a petrol station in sight or expected for many a mile yet (we didn't realise that it would be so rural out that way).  Towns that looked like large settlements on the map turned out to be tiny villages that didn't have a local store let alone a petrol station. Eventually we were told about a town up ahead called Te Araroa that was supposedly the most eastern petrol station on New Zealand, we arrived at about quarter past five to discover a single petrol pump complete with padlock, no attendant and all the town was shut including the local supermarket. At this point we had just under a quarter of a tank left, nowhere to stay -little to no food in the car and the nearest large town was about a quarter of a tank away- by now we were a little concerned! After a somewhat conservative drive [coasting downhill etc] we stopped at a ex servicemans club in Tiki Tiki that was advertising "open for hot food" yay we thought, on walking in it looked like a nice enough place... we then asked what hot food do you have- "pies with steak and cheese or mince and cheese" we both had the steak and cheese with a lovely cold pint of lion red [though Laura's was a little cold in the middle and mine had a rather nasty bone in it]. After speaking to some friendly locals at the ex servicemans we were pointed towards a town called Ruatoria which we were reliably informed had a proper petrol station and accommodation so off we trotted. When we arrived in Ruatoria it had shades of Dargeville [couple of blogs ago] and after driving round we pulled into what appeared to be the local hotel [would of been classed as a hotel in the mid nighteen sixties... maybe]. We booked in here the night in a rather dapper [not] twin room which only had a thin pillow and stick furniture but was better than sleeping in the car [laura solved this by robbing two pillows from the empty room next door]. Anyway a goods nights sleep was had and our journey continued.

The scenery was truly awesome